Talk:Yokim Sarns
Bumping this in case TR missed it, if only so he won't miss out on the new Metabarons omnibus, if he's so inclined. Turtle Fan (talk) 01:37, December 31, 2014 (UTC) :Over a year later: so I did order Metabarons when it had a pre-order price of $32 back at the close of 2014. Jump to April, 2015, when it's supposed to drop and....Amazon starts showing limited availability. Then I start getting e-mails from Amazon saying that they are trying to get a copy to me. Then they ask if they should keep searching. In May, 2015, Amazon confirms they can't get a copy and cancel the order. ::Oh, that's a shame. I still haven't gotten around to reading my copy, which I've had for about two years now. It lost its appeal when I watched the Jodorowsky's Dune documentary and realized the man is fucking insane. Turtle Fan (talk) 23:03, February 3, 2016 (UTC) :Now, it's January 2016, and I see it is honest to god legitimately available for quite a bit more than that really awesome price of $32. So yeah, I think I'll stick with the Brits for my foreign comic needs. The US versions of Judge Dredd: the Complete Case files are about four years behind the UK versions, but they did get published on schedule when solicited. TR (talk) 18:45, February 3, 2016 (UTC) You know, TR, when you do read Foundation, you will have been spoiled for one of its most elusive mysteries. Turtle Fan 15:21, November 14, 2009 (UTC) :Indeed, but the chase was certainly fun to read about. TR (talk) 06:16, December 25, 2014 (UTC) ::Isn't it? I was also spoiled on Magnifico's identity before I read it, but I found it a rich read even so. ::So you've finally gotten around to it, have you. Good for you. I wish I were in your shoes, discovering the series as new, virgin territory (even if slightly spoiled). I'm pretty much down to the bottom of the barrel of Asimov's SF novels. The last one I read, The Gods Themselves, was so blah compared with Foundation or the best of the Robot series or A Pebble in the Sky or The Stars, Like Dust. Years ago I worried that I'd use Asimov up, but figured his canon was so huge that that wasn't worth considering until the remote future. But when I rediscovered him two years ago, I greedily devoured most of the rest of the books I hadn't gotten around to on my first Asimov kick, and now, while there are still a few novels out there (not to mention short stories, essays, works of nonfiction, limericks, etc etc) I can't help feeling that the best are already behind me. Turtle Fan (talk) 04:12, December 26, 2014 (UTC) :::Indeed I am. I actually read Second Empire as a break from Dune. It's been an informal history of the genre, actually. I "knew" that Asimov and Herbert were influential, but reading them concurrently really emphasizes how influential they really are. TR (talk) 19:11, December 26, 2014 (UTC) ::::They do go together remarkably well. I really dove into Asimov in late '09/early '10, with the original Foundation trilogy, then the rather blah Foundation's Edge, then The Stars, Like Dust, then the well-north-of-blah Foundation and Earth. That got me through April of '10 (with other books in other genres in there as well of course, including my first encounter with George RR Martin, Fevre Dream, which would have been the best book I read that year if not for Dune). In May of '10 I was persuaded to give Dune another try, starting from the beginning (I had gotten about halfway through some years earlier, had enjoyed it but found it tough going and abandoned it when I was distracted by something I no longer remember). :::::Since north is "up", I assume "well-north-of-blah" is...good? Better than blah anyway? Have you read Prelude to Foundation? I'm sort of debating whether or not I want to keep going--most fan reaction to the later volumes is of the "be careful what you wish for" variety. TR (talk) 05:10, December 29, 2014 (UTC) ::::::Yeah, Foundation and Earth is pretty good--better than blah, anyway. I read it before reading the robot novels, on which it leans pretty heavily, especially Robots and Empire. (That being said, Robots and Empire was the last of the grand fifteen-book epic saga that I read, and I found its ending a more appropriate final summation than Foundation and Earth's.) Foundation and Earth was the last book that's really integrated into the extended series that I read before going into a years-long hiatus. (I did read A Pebble in the Sky and The Currents of Space somewhere in there, but those were written as standalone works and continue to read as such; the only thing that connects them to Foundation are very occasional name drops of Trantor. In the latter it's not yet the imperial capital, it's the capital of a massive nation-state with imperial ambitions--intriguing, but nothing of any real use to understanding the rest of the series comes of it.) ::::::Prelude to Foundation, that one's not too good; actually, Foundation's Edge, no masterpiece itself, is far better. It's . . . serviceable, but the spirit of Foundation is completely bred out of it. The worst one, though, is Forward the Foundation. That's a train wreck. Even so, if you're interested in reading the entire fifteen-book saga, it's not quite so bad that I would recommend abandoning that goal to avoid it. ::::::There's the so-called Second Foundation trilogy of estate-authorized novels, colloquially as "The Killer B's" because Greg Binford, Greg Bear, and David Brin each wrote one apiece. They have a terrible reputation and I've steered clear of them. If you're interested in seeing more of the series than Asimov himself ever wrote, however, then check out Foundation's Friends; Turtledove's already in there, so you've got an in, and there are many other delightful stories included. Orson Scott Card's novella is particularly impressive. After that, a few months ago I read the surprisingly entertaining homage Psychohistorical Crisis by Donald Kingsbury. It's technically in an original universe, but borrows heavily from Asimov, and makes no bones about it--most of the thefts are hardly any more disguised than the alternate Settling Accounts stories we half-joked about years ago, with James Stonefeather and Laura Hot Dog. There's a lot of humor there, but mostly it's an impressively deep consideration of some aspects of psychohistory that Asimov never considered, at least not in his published writings. ::::::Then Jeffrey Brown wrote Foundation and Second Empire, which he intended as the beginning of a trilogy chronicling the adventures that start as the Seldon Plan reaches its thousand-year conclusion. He published it exclusively as an e-book and openly admitted that it was unauthorized. Apparently the latter was a bit too flagrant for Asimov's next of kin to overlook, because it's no longer available from any e-book store that I know of. Needless to say, Books 2 and 3 will not be released, and since it was only available as an e-book, there's no chance of finding a used copy. I did download it to my Kindle before it was purged from existence (the book, that is, not my Kindle) and I'm still able to open it, but I have to think long and hard about reading a book that ends on a cliffhanger that I already know will never be resolved. Turtle Fan (talk) 04:28, December 30, 2014 (UTC) ::::My intention had been to finish Dune itself and stop, but there were too many strings not tied down and over the course of the summer (which also included A Pebble in the Sky) so I decided to read Messiah, then Children, and by the time I got around to God-Emperor I realized I was too far in ever to back out, so I went ahead and bought Heretics and Chapterhouse. I'd definitely say Chapterhouse is the worst of them, which is sad because it's also the last of them and you hate to see so strong a series end on its weakest note. ::::From there I looked for other books and media to satisfy my by-now impossible-to-break addiction to melange. My first encounter with the raw sewage which Brian Herbert publishes under his late father's imprimatur convinced me I wanted no part of that particular story; but there's Doon and The Dune Encyclopedia and The Notebooks of Frank Herbert's Dune and Songs of Muad'Dib and The Maker of Dune and The Science of Dune and Dune and Philosophy and just this year, Tan Harvest. There are the various film adaptations and the many spinoff materials each of them generated, and a new documentary in which Alejandro Jodorowsky does a kind of post-mortem on his very bizarre and ultimately failed effort to do his own Dune movie. There are the board games and the computer games. It's only within the last few months or so that I've come to realize the well has finally run dry for me (still not touching Brian Herbert's shit) and lately I've been thinking about reading the series of graphic novels to which Jodorowsky apparently transplanted all the original elements he was planning to introduce into his Dune movie. But nothing compares with the original. :::::Ah, yes, The Metabarons. That's on my expansive list of "things to read while I'm still able to read". The problem with that series is that it's been in out of print in English so many times, and it's so lengthy, I'm worried I'll get going and then be left high and dry by the vagaries of trans-Atlantic publishing. (I keep thinking I should see El Topo, too.) ::::::Apparently there's going to be a 544-page omnibus anniversary edition published in February. Amazon is now taking pre-orders for $32.69. Could be the time to move. Me, I eventually wound up buying a new--still in the shrink wrap, which I promptly removed and thus badly reduced its resale value--version of the last English-language omnibus from a third-party seller, to the tune of $55. That was a lot of money to spend before I was fully committed to reading it, but I guess I knew I'd get around to it sooner or later. I wish I'd known a $33 copy would soon be available, but I can't get too upset even then, because even with that on the way, the lowest price for the edition I bought that is currently available on Amazon is $99. Turtle Fan (talk) 04:28, December 30, 2014 (UTC) :::::Your assessment of the Brian Herbert's work seems consistent with everyone else's. TR (talk) 05:10, December 29, 2014 (UTC) ::::::Hunters of Dune, which was intended as the immediate sequel to Chapterhouse, is on its own not really any worse than Chapterhouse itself (which, again, isn't saying much). Before Herbert the Younger and Kevin Anderson wrote it, though, they decided to involve a shitload of backstory that Frank Herbert never wrote (which is why their claim that everything comes from notes discovered in his personal effects is considered so dubious) and promptly shat up continuity with half a dozen prequels just so we'd give a shit about their original characters. (I don't give a shit; in fact, I skipped all those prequels and went straight into Hunters itself.) Even that could be forgiven, but . . . well, Hunters is only the first half of what they claim was going to be the seventh Dune book; they broke it into Volume 7.1 and Volume 7.2, with the latter being titled Sandworms of Dune. And the cliffhanger that Hunters ends on is such an outrageous repudiation of everything that Frank Herbert's books are about that I immediately decided to shun the rest of their story and exclude it from my understanding of canon. (Seems that every sci fi franchise I enjoy eventually reaches the point where I end up doing that, sadly.) Turtle Fan (talk) 04:28, December 30, 2014 (UTC) ::::Anyway, discovering Foundation and Dune within a few months of each other, and allowing the two sagas to unfold almost simultaneously in front of me, was the most exhilarating literary experience of my life. Enjoy. Turtle Fan (talk) 23:26, December 28, 2014 (UTC) You know I love the inconsistencies--In each book in which the Speakers of the Second Foundation meet with one another, Asimov makes mention of the fact that they don't talk as normal people do, but use a very subtle, meaning-rich mode of communication based on crude telepathy, facial expressions, gestures, and sounds--the role of verbal communication in this language of theirs changes (perhaps through Asimov's own inconsistencies) but is always secondary. Asimov notes that the dialogue which he writes for the speakers is as close a translation as he can get but is still inadequate, like a two-dimensional map of the world. Turtledove doesn't specifically say that his Speakers weren't using that form of communication, but he certainly gives no indication that they're using Speaker-speak in the last scene, and Sarns's smiling broadly, even smugly, would surely be out of place in a form of communication in which the tiniest flicks of facial features mean something. I have to imagine that such an obvious expression would be the equivalent of screaming "FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!" or something equally shocking and disruptive. Turtle Fan 07:18, November 17, 2009 (UTC)